Learners Corner...or What do you use your computer for?

Couldn't decide the title...

I want to know what you use your computer for. I want to know because there are big holes in my knowledge about things like HTPC, NAS, Home servers, Home Automation etc etc etc. I want to learn about the basics of these subjects. If you have the time and knowledge post up a beginners guide to things I need to know about any of these subjects.

My computer hobby centers on World Community Grid, Distributed computing for research into:

Computing for Clean Water
The Clean Energy Project - Phase 2
Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy - Phase 2
Help Fight Childhood Cancer
Help Conquer Cancer
Human Proteome Folding - Phase 2
FightAIDS@Home

personally, I can perhaps give help for computing 24/7 overclocks and advice if anyone is interested

Sounds like you are very productive with your PC's.

I run 5 computers at the moment 3 for the 4 kids, the wifes and mine.
The kids play and social network, the wife plays, social network, school and work.

Mine is for play and work. I Administer or moderate a few forums and do my quoting and billing for work.

I am seriously considering building a HTPC for all the movies I have taking up space in the house. I became a movie backup Junkie about 5 years ago maybe 6 and i am getting sick of all the clutter. I would like to transfer all to hard drives and use with a dedicated HTPC, but a home server with WD Live boxes may be the best way to go for all the TV's in the house.

You can stream from an HTPC as well Joel, I don't put much faith in media boxes like the patriot one i reviewed or WD box, don't get me wrong but they just don't seem to work as well as a dedicated HTPC plus there quite limited in what they can do entertainment wise.

smduff wrote:You can stream from an HTPC as well Joel, I don't put much faith in media boxes like the patriot one i reviewed or WD box, don't get me wrong but they just don't seem to work as well as a dedicated HTPC plus there quite limited in what they can do entertainment wise.

One of the benefits of a HTPC is the ability to stream to multiple TV's where the WD box is dedicated to a single TV.

I have 4 PC's on my network. My main PC which I use for general purpose stuff, my wife's PC which she uses for work, another desktop I use for testing and home automation with x10, and my laptop which I am using more and more. In addition to my wireless router I have a Apple Airport wired and stuck in my dining room so when I'm on my deck I can use the laptop to stream music to my outside speakers.

What? you have a boat outside?

I have or am about to have running 2 Q6600's, x3350, i7 920, i7 950 so with around 5TB of storage divided among them and 4 core2 duo laptops in the house too all running on a 24port switch plus a trendnet wireless bridged into a pfsense router (now my only amd box and only dual core) I feel I should be able to do most stuff if only I knew how.

What is it you want to do Mike, building an HTPC is a piece of cake if you know what you want to achieve with it.

Duff, give us some examples... How do you use 1 HTPC to stream to multiple TV's? What hardware is needed for the Tv's? And so on.

Well I guess I want to know first what I could do with films, saved to a machine that is remote from tv with limited build for box under tv.

I will upgrade tv and surround this year if the cash is there after trip to USA in June so I would like to know what is possible using what I have.

I could for example upgrade the ram in the router and run something on that whilst running Pfsense as a VM if that is doable on a amd athlon x2 5050e

Like I said any is possible you can run an htpc with a single core and it will run great, now if you want to do some gaming on it, that adds a whole different set of requirements for the machine.

My HTPC specs are:

AMD 955BE
4 gigs generic ram 667mhz
Gigabyte GTS 450
MSi Mobo K9A2 Platinum
Silverstone HTPC chassis
Visiontek Candyboard
10TB HDD space

I run videos to multiple TV's at once, play video games, PVR ect this is built from stuff I just had hanging around or reviewed at some point.

I'd be interested in how you get from HTPC to tv . what software do you employ from the time you put the original dvd into the pc to the time you play the film from the pc on the tv. Will this same software that plays on the HTPC find films stored on other computers?

Don't do gaming yet my boy can do that on his own tv and pc when the time comes (he's 9 and still playing Wii and ds)

I just use windows media center with a few addon's like TMT to play BD movies. Everything I have movie wise is ripped to the HDD on the HTPC, I was tired of having all the discs sitting around taking up space so I started to move them over to digital storage I also have a Divix player added in so I can now play .mkv files so they take up less space than a video ts folder with the same quality as the original DVD. To get it to stream to other TV sets other than where the HTPC is it goes over the network I built to my sons and daughters TV's via media streaming boxes like the WD player and a Patriot media player.

grumpydaddy wrote:
What? you have a boat outside?

Must be the translation from one side of the pond to the other.

DECK not DOCK.... :D:

Living by the sea the normal use of the word...

Top of a boat as in "all hands on...."

Then there is "record deck"

but I'm guessing you mean you have

decking to cover the ground in the garden

...was just playing with the sometimes interesting changes of use of the language over there. We do it too so no worries most don't bother me at all...the only word that annoys me is gay....it used to mean cheerful and happy. and don't get me wrong on this either I am not against same sex relationships as long as it is away from me.

(this turned serious too easily ...sorry)

That is the difference between this and most forums. We are open to pretty much anything here. :D:

I think there are some "Gays" that are Cheerful & Happy. :laugh: :laugh:

And to throw a twist into things I am about to enjoy a "fag."

See how open and accepting we are here...

To each his own. You guys up North are something else. :D: